Zaccardelli - Bits & Pieces
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07/12/06, Scott Deveau, Day says RCMP chief never lied to him, (Source).
07/12/06, Daniel Leblanc, Zaccardelli takes the fall, (Source).
06/12/06, Jeff Sallot, RCMP chief's troubles grow, (Source).
06/12/06, Editorial, Zaccardelli wades deeper into the mire, (Source).
06/12/06, Greg McArthur, Politics closing in on RCMP's top cop, (Source).
05/12/06, Editorial, The two Arar stories that Zaccardelli tells, (Source).
07/12/06, Scott Deveau, Day says RCMP chief never lied to him, (Back).
Public Safety Minister Stockewell Day said Wednesday that he feels he was never purposely led astray by outgoing RCMP commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli, despite his contradictory testimony before a Commons committee on the case of Maher Arar.
“Never once have I felt that the commissioner lied to me or tried deliberately in anyway to lead me astray,” Mr. Day said Thursday before a commons committee on the Arar case.
“There could be other reasons for the contradiction, and other reasons, as the commissioner has said, that finally resulted in his resignation.”
Mr. Zaccardelli was forced to resign after he admitted this week that he had made a “mistake” in his previous testimony and had inadvertently misled a parliamentary committee about his involvement in the case of Mr. Arar.
But since the RCMP chief tendered his resignation, Opposition MPs have redirected their sights on precisely when the Conservative government knew the former commissioner would be changing his story, and why it took them so long to act.
Citing a Nov. 2 letter sent to the commission indicating Mr. Zaccardelli's intention to clarify his testimony, Liberal MP and vice-chair Mark Holland accused Mr. Day Thursday before the Commons committee of not acting when he first heard that Mr. Zaccardelli changed his story.
“The reality is, you knew and you did nothing,” Mr. Holland said during Thursday's sitting.
But, Mr. Day said he was happy with the government's progress on the case after the inquiry's report was released in September and said that several of the reports 23 recommendations relating to the RCMP have already been implemented.
He also said that the federal government will engage in formal compensation discussions with Mr. Arar and his lawyers at the end of next week.
The RCMP chief testified in September in his first appearance before the committee that he knew as early as 2002 that false information linking Mr. Arar to al-Qaeda had been shared with U.S. officials.
He then changed his tune this week saying that it was not until Justice Dennis O'Connor released his report into the affair two months ago that he became aware of the RCMP's involvement spreading that misinformation.
Mr. Arar was detained by U.S. officials in 2002, before being deported to Syria, where he was tortured and held in custody for one year. His detention was in part a result of the false information shared with U.S. officials.
Mr. Zaccardelli is expected to hold a brief news conference at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa at noon Thursday.
According to Mr. Arar's lawyers, he will also be address the media on Friday about this week's events.
Next week, Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into the affair is expected release another report that will include recommendations to increase oversight of the RCMP.
Meanwhile, speculation is rife about who will replace Mr. Zaccardelli. If the RCMP choose to promote within their ranks, four deputy commissioners appear to be in the forefront.
Tim Killam, a former undercover drug cop and currently the force's No. 2, and Pierre-Yves Bourduas are considered strong contenders.
There are also two women — Bev Busson in B.C., and Barbara George, originally from Newfoundland — who have made history by becoming the first female deputy commissioners in RCMP history.
But Opposition MPs have called for someone outside the RCMP ranks to take the job in order to put a fresh face on the embattled forces.
07/12/06, Daniel Leblanc, Zaccardelli takes the fall, (Back).
RCMP commissioner forced to resign after misleading parliamentary committee probing Arar case.
OTTAWA — Giuliano Zaccardelli on Wednesday became the first commissioner in the storied history of the RCMP to be forced out under a cloud of controversy.
He was forced to resign after his admission this week that he had misled a parliamentary committee on his involvement in the case of Maher Arar.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper informed the House of Commons of Mr. Zaccardelli's resignation.
“The commissioner has indicated to me that it would be in the best interests of the RCMP to have new leadership and that this great organization faces challenges in the future. I would like to thank the commissioner for his long and dedicated service to the RCMP and the country,” Mr. Harper said.
Mr. Zaccardelli intends to speak publicly about his resignation today. In a message to the force yesterday, he said, “My life has been defined by my experience of being a Mountie and there is not one moment, one decision or one circumstance of my career, that I would change.”
The resignation does not take effect until Dec. 15. He will receive a full pension for his 36 years of service in the force. Last night, the lights were out at his house. A lone constable stood guard outside.
Speculation began almost immediately about who will succeed Mr. Zaccardelli. The replacement is expected to come from within the Mounties' ranks.
Opposition MPs and experts said the problems in the RCMP are so severe that fresh thinking has to bring about a thorough reform of the 133-year-old institution.
“I would suggest the next commissioner has to come from outside the force. That will be a blow for the RCMP itself, but it will also be a signal for change,” said Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies.
A spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said that “no option has been excluded.
“Once a replacement process is selected, I imagine that implies determining whether we want to go forward with somebody from the inside or the outside,” Melisa Leclerc said.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office said Mr. Harper put no pressure on Mr. Zaccardelli to resign.
“Mr. Zaccardelli offered his resignation and the Prime Minister accepted it,” PMO director of communications Sandra Buckler said.
Still, Mr. Harper clearly suggested on Tuesday that he was losing confidence in the commissioner, stating that he was “surprised and concerned” by Mr. Zaccardelli's changing testimony. Mr. Harper added he wanted to respect “due process” in his handling of the case.
Mr. Day and Mr. Zaccardelli spoke that evening, before Mr. Zaccardelli tendered his resignation.
“They had a brief and professional discussion,” Ms. Leclerc said.
Retired RCMP superintendent Ben Soave, now a security consultant, blamed the news media and politicians for the resignation of his close friend.
“It's going to be very difficult to find a man of his integrity and commitment to public service and law enforcement. This is a sad day for the organization. As far as I'm concerned it's a victory for terrorism, organized crime and the scum of the earth,” he said.
Mr. Zaccardelli's downfall started in September when he told a parliamentary committee that he first learned RCMP officers mistakenly fingered Mr. Arar as a terrorist — but had tried to correct the record with U.S. authorities — while Mr. Arar was in a Syrian prison four years ago.
Two days ago, however, he said he “made a mistake” in that testimony and he did not know that Mounties did not try to correct the record at the time.
“The events subsequent to the release of Justice Dennis R. O'Connor's report on the Arar situation have taken on a life of their own. I must take responsibility for having added to the confusion ... “ Mr. Zaccardelli said in his resignation letter to Mr. Harper. “The continuing controversy ... makes it increasingly difficult for me and for the institution to fulfill its responsibilities to the Canadian people.”
Behind closed doors, Mr. Day, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Justice Minister Vic Toews all expressed their wish that Mr. Zaccardelli be turfed, The Canadian Press reported.
Mr. Day made a direct appeal to the Prime Minister at one cabinet meeting this fall. “Day asked straight out. He said, ‘This is not right. Why is this man still here?''' a government official said.
The Prime Minister avoided the subject, the official said. “Harper just changed the channel. He said, ‘Now, moving along to the next subject.' He just cut him dead.”
However, late Wednesday, the PMO vigorously denied the account of the two senior government officials that Mr. Harper had defended Mr. Zaccardelli for months in the face of criticism from his own ministers.
“I've just spoken with Stockwell Day, who was quoted in [the] story. I've also spoken with the Prime Minister of Canada,” Ms. Buckler said. “The story is an outright and utter fabrication.”
The two government sources, however, said there had been a growing sense of unease that Mr. Zaccardelli appeared untouchable despite mounting controversies — the Arar affair, an RCMP pension scandal and the force's involvement in the Liberal sponsorship fiasco.
Opposition MPs said that an outsider might be needed for the good of the RCMP.
“We need a clean break,” Liberal MP Mark Holland said. NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe both said a parliamentary committee should have the opportunity to vet the new commissioner of the RCMP.
Mr. Zaccardelli, 58, worked on white-collar and organized crime before taking over the force in 2000. He also participated in the Musical Ride as a hobby. Morale is low at the RCMP following the Arar debacle and a number of recent controversies across Canada.
The O'Connor inquiry found that the RCMP provided incorrect intelligence about al-Qaeda links that Mr. Arar was alleged to have had to U.S. authorities. The Americans detained Mr. Arar in the fall of 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held in a small, filthy cell for a year.
The O'Connor inquiry will release another report next week that will include recommendations to increase oversight of the RCMP.
RCMP Commissioner Leonard Nicholson resigned in 1959 after the government of John Diefenbaker refused a request for reinforcements to deal with a contentious Newfoundland strike.
06/12/06, Jeff Sallot, RCMP chief's troubles grow, (Back).
In one day on the Hill, Canada's top police officer was made to swear on a Bible, accused of perjury by an MP and put on notice by the Prime Minister for changing his testimony on the Arar case.
OTTAWA — Giuliano Zaccardelli, Canada's top police officer, was forced to swear on a Bible Tuesday before being allowed to give evidence to Parliament.
He was then accused of perjury by a Liberal MP.
By day's end, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was “surprised and concerned” by the fact the RCMP Commissioner had changed key testimony given in the Maher Arar case.
Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday he did not lie but had been mistaken in earlier testimony about what he knew, and when, in the case of Mr. Arar, an innocent Canadian whom the Mounties wrongly labelled as an al-Qaeda terrorist.
In a rare move, the top Mountie was asked to swear the oath by public safety and security committee co-chairman Mark Holland, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who said Mr. Zaccardelli may have perjured himself in the earlier testimony. Witnesses at House committees are almost never asked to take an oath before testifying.
Mr. Harper and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said they will carefully study Mr. Zaccardelli's sworn testimony as they consider his future.
The Prime Minister responded to opposition calls for the commissioner's immediate dismissal by saying: “We do not fire people without due process. But we will proceed appropriately and ensure there is accountability for actions.”
Mr. Zaccardelli's job appeared to be hanging by a thread as the Conservative minority government tried to distance itself from him. The three opposition parties called for his resignation.
Mr. Harper was anxious to point out that the Liberals were in office in 2002 when Mr. Arar was deported from the U.S. to Syria.
Nevertheless, he said, “the government is surprised and concerned by the change in story in the [commissioner's] testimony today.”
“This government will examine the facts and will respond in a manner that is objective, professional and dispassionate and will be done with full regard to due process,” Mr. Harper added.
Mr. Zaccardelli testified before the committee on Sept. 28 that he first learned members of the force had mistakenly fingered Mr. Arar as a terrorist — but had tried to correct the record with U.S authorities — while Mr. Arar was still in a Syrian prison four years ago.
He now says he “made a mistake” in his earlier testimony and he really did not know that Mounties did not try to correct the record at the time.
Mr. Zaccardelli told skeptical committee members he did not have a complete picture about what had passed between Canadian and U.S. security agencies until after a judicial commission of inquiry report cleared Mr. Arar on Sept. 18.
The commissioner said he did not intend to mislead the committee, but he had mistakenly incorporated information he first knew of from the inquiry report this September with his recollection of what he knew in 2002 and 2003.
Mr. Zaccardelli carefully couched Tuesday's testimony in conditional phrases, such as “to the best of my knowledge.”
At one point, under intense questioning by Bloc Québécois MP Serge Ménard, a former Quebec public safety minister, he said: “ I indicated I may not have totally represented the facts as they were.”
Mr. Day said the first he knew of the “apparent contradiction” in the commissioner's story only on Monday when Mr. Zaccardelli discussed the Arar case during a luncheon speaking appearance at the Canadian Club of Ottawa.
However, Mr. Zaccardelli said he met with Mr. Day last Friday to discuss his coming appearance at a parliamentary committee. But Mr. Zaccardelli said he did not tell his minister what he intended to say during his second appearance before the committee.
Mr. Zaccardelli also disclosed another meeting with Mr. Day on Sept. 22, the Friday before he was to testify before the committee on the first occasion. The commissioner said he did not disclose this meeting previously because he was not sure if Mr. Day wanted that information out. “I was not as forthcoming on my meeting as I might have been.”
Mr. Zaccardelli denied the suggestion that Mr. Day or other Conservative ministers were either muzzling him or trying to tell him what to say in testimony.
Incredulous MPs from all parties tore into Mr. Zaccardelli at the committee.
The charitable view, expressed by Montreal Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler, and several other committee members, was that Mr. Zaccardelli's changing version of events demonstrates such incompetence that he should resign.
Mr. Holland, the co-chairman, was more pointed. He asked: “On which day did you perjure yourself? Today or Sept. 28?”
Mr. Holland later repeated the perjury allegation to reporters outside the committee room, saying: “We've now got Mr. Zaccardelli, in my opinion, perjuring himself before a parliamentary committee.”
Ontario Conservative MP Gord Brown told the commissioner it was hard to buy his story that he learned the facts only from the Arar commission report.
“How can it be that the commissioner can't get information from your own organization?” Mr. Brown asked. “Doesn't that suggest to you that you failed in your duty?”
Mr. Zaccardelli said he runs a large organization of 25,000 people, and in the Arar case bits of information were held by disparate parts of the RCMP.
It was only when Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor pulled all the pieces together in his report on the Arar case in September that the picture became clear for him, Mr. Zaccardelli said.
(Judge O'Connor cleared Mr. Arar, a Canadian computer engineer, of any involvement with al-Qaeda and terrorism. The O'Connor inquiry found that the RCMP provided incorrect and inflammatory intelligence about Mr. Arar's supposed al-Qaeda links to U.S. authorities. The Americans detained Mr. Arar in the fall of 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held in a small, filthy cell for a year, the judge said.)
Ontario Conservative MP Rick Norlock, a 30-year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police, was annoyed that Mr. Zaccardelli did not notify the committee of his mistaken testimony until yesterday, two months after the fact.
Another Conservative MP on the committee, Laurie Hawn of Edmonton, said: “I'm a little incredulous” that a Mountie with 36 years on the job could have been so mistaken in remembering what he knew and when about an incident as notorious as the Arar case.
“I have a hard time accepting the fact that you made that kind of mistake,” Mr. Hawn said.
06/12/06, Editorial, Zaccardelli wades deeper into the mire, (Back).
Baffling, bizarre, outrageous, comical. RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's testimony on the Maher Arar file before the House of Commons national security committee yesterday was all those things. His defence of his shameful performance on that file defied reason, logic and the public record. It contradicted the entire thrust of his testimony before the same committee on Sept. 28. It was yet another embarrassment for a national police force that has had far too many embarrassments of late.
Here was the commissioner of the RCMP being asked to swear an oath to tell the truth -- the very first witness requested to do so in front of the national security committee under this government. Granted, the motion to have him swear an oath was put forward for calculated effect by a Liberal MP, Mark Holland. But none of the Conservatives on the committee opposed it. It seems Mr. Zaccardelli has lost the trust of the committee. He has also, since September, lost the trust of the country.
The question is when he will lose the trust of the government that employs him. Every day he remains commissioner gives the lie to Stephen Harper's promise to make government accountable for its actions. Under Mr. Zaccardelli's leadership, the RCMP made the dangerous assertion to U.S. authorities that Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was suspected of being an al-Qaeda member; the RCMP had no evidence to support the claim. When Mr. Arar was detained in New York in late September, 2002, the RCMP took a microscopic step toward correcting the record by saying it had no definitive information on his links to al-Qaeda. Too little, too late; four days later, the United States shipped him to Syria, where he was detained for a year and tortured. Mr. Zaccardelli said in his testimony in September that he learned all this early on. Yet the record shows he did little or nothing to make the Canadian government aware of the RCMP errors.
Now he claims he was "imprecise" in his Sept. 28 testimony. Canadians can make up their own minds. The transcripts are available on the parliamentary website at http://www.parl.gc.ca\secu (look under "meetings"). Mr. Zaccardelli's repeated explanations on Sept. 28 do not lack for precision. "I personally became directly involved in the file after Mr. Arar was detained and sent to Syria. . . . Mr. Chairman, as I have said, I learned that a mistake had been made, that the information concerning Mr. Arar was false, after Mr. Arar was imprisoned. At the same time, I learned that the investigators had made an effort to correct that false information."
Yesterday, however, he said he learned about the mistakes only when he read the report this September of an inquiry by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor. "No senior officer was aware of [the mistakes] and all of us became aware after the report was published by Justice O'Connor."
Mr. Zaccardelli is asking Canadians to believe that as RCMP commissioner he waited four years to ask questions. In the months after Mr. Arar turned up in Syria, U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci and secretary of state Colin Powell said publicly and privately to Canadian officials that the United States deemed Mr. Arar an al-Qaeda suspect based on information from Canada. That is the public record. It was Mr. Zaccardelli's duty to ask questions.
Whether in his Sept. 28 evasions or in yesterday's, Mr. Zaccardelli is damaging the RCMP's already tarnished reputation. A recent poll found the RCMP popular in the West for its local police service. But its behaviour on Mr. Arar and on other disturbing files -- as when it interfered in the last federal election by announcing, in mid-campaign, an investigation into the Liberal finance minister's office -- inspires no confidence. The force has a leader who cannot keep his story straight on his most important file.
Either Mr. Zaccardelli kept vital information from cabinet or he never bothered to find out what went on in the Arar file. Either way, the potential effect was the same: Mr. Arar's torturous stay in Syria was prolonged. If there is a shred of accountability to be found in the land of the Accountability Act, Mr. Zaccardelli will not be commissioner much longer.
06/12/06, Greg McArthur, Politics closing in on RCMP's top cop, (Back).
RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has overseen criminal investigations that didn't hesitate to wade into Canadian political spheres, whether those probes targeted journalists, cabinet ministers -- or even if they fell during an election.
But now it is politics that is quickly closing in on him.
As Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government weigh his conflicting testimony before a Commons committee, Mr. Zaccardelli's six-year reign -- filled with unresolved plots and political intrigue, will be not be left out of their final decision.
He arrived in Canada in the 1950s from the village of Prezza, Italy. As a boy in Montreal, he delivered newspapers and took part-time jobs in restaurants. After attending Loyola College, he became one of the few non-Canadian-born recruits to join the RCMP.
It was in New Brunswick, where Mr. Zaccardelli was head of criminal operations, that the reality of police work would become clear. It's muddy, and the mud sticks.
During his tenure on the East Coast allegations began to surface about the Kingsclear Youth Training School near Fredericton. A school guard was convicted of sexually assaulting young boys, but many residents claimed in a civil lawsuit that they were abused by an RCMP officer and that the force covered it up.
Mr. Zaccardelli called the alleged cover-up a sham -- "There were three major investigations, there was an inquiry," he said in 2004.
A Quebec judge questioned the RCMP when he dismissed all the charges against François Beaudoin, former president of the Business Development Bank of Canada. The RCMP raided Mr. Beaudoin's home, chalet and golf club in 2001. Mr. Beaudoin had refused to grant a loan extension to a hotel in the riding of former prime minister Jean Chrétien. Mr. Justice André Denis, in throwing out charges against Mr. Beaudoin, noted "the ferocity and unkindness with which [Mr. Beaudoin] was treated in this affair."
Former National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh was also served with a search warrant by the RCMP after he wrote stories that questioned whether Mr. Chrétien tried to influence the bank's decision.
An RCMP raid on the home and office of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neil generated more recent headlines. Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushney has admonished Mr. Zaccardelli's force for the search, which she called an attempt to use Ms. O'Neill to find who leaked classified documents in the case of Mr. Arar.
However,it is the RCMP probe into how the private sector learned in advance about a Liberal government income-trust announcement that may affect history the most.
In the middle of last January's federal campaign, the commissioner faxed a letter to the office of an NDP MP confirming that the RCMP had launched an investigation into the leak -- perhaps the tipping point for the faltering campaign of former prime minister Paul Martin.
05/12/06, Editorial, The two Arar stories that Zaccardelli tells, (Back).
The contradiction that tumbled from the mouth of RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli yesterday is surely one he is aware of. It was a mountain of a contradiction, next to which Michael Ignatieff's "I'm not losing any sleep" (over Israel's bombing of Qana, Lebanon) and "it was a war crime" are but a molehill.
Addressing what he knew about the devastatingly wrong information communicated by the RCMP to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation about a Canadian, Maher Arar -- information that surely propelled Mr. Arar to his year-long nightmare of incarceration and torture in Syria four years ago -- Mr. Zaccardelli told the Canadian Club in Ottawa this: "Senior officials, including myself, were not informed until the commission of inquiry completed its works." (Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor spent 2½ years assessing Canada's role in the deportation.)
If true, his remark yesterday is utterly self-damning. While a Canadian was confined in a Syrian prison, while the media raised alarms and while the Canadian government at its highest levels scrambled for answers, this commissioner sat in the dark. Notice the passive voice: "were not informed." Did he not ask, demand, probe, threaten?
Of course he did. He said as much (except for the threatening part) to the House of Commons security committee on Sept. 28. "What did you know and when did you know it?" the committee asked. Mr. Zaccardelli replied that he took pains to inform himself virtually from the time Mr. Arar turned up in a Syrian jail. He went on to say: "I found out that investigators were speaking to American officials while Mr. Arar was in detention [in New York]. I learned that, in that process, they tried to correct what was labelled as false and misleading information. That is my first point of knowledge."
That was an illuminating admission. If he meant what he said, Mr. Zaccardelli knew nearly from the beginning that the RCMP had helped create a human tragedy when it told the FBI, without any evidence to say so, that Mr. Arar was an Islamic extremist suspected of al-Qaeda links. Mr. Zaccardelli had a moral duty and a duty to his office to try to undo the errors. He failed miserably. He told no government minister that the RCMP had delivered wrong information to the Americans.
Mr. Zaccardelli appears again this morning before the security committee. Which story will he tell?
(Back).
07/12/06, Daniel Leblanc, Zaccardelli takes the fall, (Source).
06/12/06, Jeff Sallot, RCMP chief's troubles grow, (Source).
06/12/06, Editorial, Zaccardelli wades deeper into the mire, (Source).
06/12/06, Greg McArthur, Politics closing in on RCMP's top cop, (Source).
05/12/06, Editorial, The two Arar stories that Zaccardelli tells, (Source).
07/12/06, Scott Deveau, Day says RCMP chief never lied to him, (Back).
Public Safety Minister Stockewell Day said Wednesday that he feels he was never purposely led astray by outgoing RCMP commissioner Guiliano Zaccardelli, despite his contradictory testimony before a Commons committee on the case of Maher Arar.
“Never once have I felt that the commissioner lied to me or tried deliberately in anyway to lead me astray,” Mr. Day said Thursday before a commons committee on the Arar case.
“There could be other reasons for the contradiction, and other reasons, as the commissioner has said, that finally resulted in his resignation.”
Mr. Zaccardelli was forced to resign after he admitted this week that he had made a “mistake” in his previous testimony and had inadvertently misled a parliamentary committee about his involvement in the case of Mr. Arar.
But since the RCMP chief tendered his resignation, Opposition MPs have redirected their sights on precisely when the Conservative government knew the former commissioner would be changing his story, and why it took them so long to act.
Citing a Nov. 2 letter sent to the commission indicating Mr. Zaccardelli's intention to clarify his testimony, Liberal MP and vice-chair Mark Holland accused Mr. Day Thursday before the Commons committee of not acting when he first heard that Mr. Zaccardelli changed his story.
“The reality is, you knew and you did nothing,” Mr. Holland said during Thursday's sitting.
But, Mr. Day said he was happy with the government's progress on the case after the inquiry's report was released in September and said that several of the reports 23 recommendations relating to the RCMP have already been implemented.
He also said that the federal government will engage in formal compensation discussions with Mr. Arar and his lawyers at the end of next week.
The RCMP chief testified in September in his first appearance before the committee that he knew as early as 2002 that false information linking Mr. Arar to al-Qaeda had been shared with U.S. officials.
He then changed his tune this week saying that it was not until Justice Dennis O'Connor released his report into the affair two months ago that he became aware of the RCMP's involvement spreading that misinformation.
Mr. Arar was detained by U.S. officials in 2002, before being deported to Syria, where he was tortured and held in custody for one year. His detention was in part a result of the false information shared with U.S. officials.
Mr. Zaccardelli is expected to hold a brief news conference at the RCMP headquarters in Ottawa at noon Thursday.
According to Mr. Arar's lawyers, he will also be address the media on Friday about this week's events.
Next week, Justice Dennis O'Connor's inquiry into the affair is expected release another report that will include recommendations to increase oversight of the RCMP.
Meanwhile, speculation is rife about who will replace Mr. Zaccardelli. If the RCMP choose to promote within their ranks, four deputy commissioners appear to be in the forefront.
Tim Killam, a former undercover drug cop and currently the force's No. 2, and Pierre-Yves Bourduas are considered strong contenders.
There are also two women — Bev Busson in B.C., and Barbara George, originally from Newfoundland — who have made history by becoming the first female deputy commissioners in RCMP history.
But Opposition MPs have called for someone outside the RCMP ranks to take the job in order to put a fresh face on the embattled forces.
07/12/06, Daniel Leblanc, Zaccardelli takes the fall, (Back).
RCMP commissioner forced to resign after misleading parliamentary committee probing Arar case.
OTTAWA — Giuliano Zaccardelli on Wednesday became the first commissioner in the storied history of the RCMP to be forced out under a cloud of controversy.
He was forced to resign after his admission this week that he had misled a parliamentary committee on his involvement in the case of Maher Arar.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper informed the House of Commons of Mr. Zaccardelli's resignation.
“The commissioner has indicated to me that it would be in the best interests of the RCMP to have new leadership and that this great organization faces challenges in the future. I would like to thank the commissioner for his long and dedicated service to the RCMP and the country,” Mr. Harper said.
Mr. Zaccardelli intends to speak publicly about his resignation today. In a message to the force yesterday, he said, “My life has been defined by my experience of being a Mountie and there is not one moment, one decision or one circumstance of my career, that I would change.”
The resignation does not take effect until Dec. 15. He will receive a full pension for his 36 years of service in the force. Last night, the lights were out at his house. A lone constable stood guard outside.
Speculation began almost immediately about who will succeed Mr. Zaccardelli. The replacement is expected to come from within the Mounties' ranks.
Opposition MPs and experts said the problems in the RCMP are so severe that fresh thinking has to bring about a thorough reform of the 133-year-old institution.
“I would suggest the next commissioner has to come from outside the force. That will be a blow for the RCMP itself, but it will also be a signal for change,” said Wesley Wark, a professor at the University of Toronto and president of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies.
A spokeswoman for Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said that “no option has been excluded.
“Once a replacement process is selected, I imagine that implies determining whether we want to go forward with somebody from the inside or the outside,” Melisa Leclerc said.
A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office said Mr. Harper put no pressure on Mr. Zaccardelli to resign.
“Mr. Zaccardelli offered his resignation and the Prime Minister accepted it,” PMO director of communications Sandra Buckler said.
Still, Mr. Harper clearly suggested on Tuesday that he was losing confidence in the commissioner, stating that he was “surprised and concerned” by Mr. Zaccardelli's changing testimony. Mr. Harper added he wanted to respect “due process” in his handling of the case.
Mr. Day and Mr. Zaccardelli spoke that evening, before Mr. Zaccardelli tendered his resignation.
“They had a brief and professional discussion,” Ms. Leclerc said.
Retired RCMP superintendent Ben Soave, now a security consultant, blamed the news media and politicians for the resignation of his close friend.
“It's going to be very difficult to find a man of his integrity and commitment to public service and law enforcement. This is a sad day for the organization. As far as I'm concerned it's a victory for terrorism, organized crime and the scum of the earth,” he said.
Mr. Zaccardelli's downfall started in September when he told a parliamentary committee that he first learned RCMP officers mistakenly fingered Mr. Arar as a terrorist — but had tried to correct the record with U.S. authorities — while Mr. Arar was in a Syrian prison four years ago.
Two days ago, however, he said he “made a mistake” in that testimony and he did not know that Mounties did not try to correct the record at the time.
“The events subsequent to the release of Justice Dennis R. O'Connor's report on the Arar situation have taken on a life of their own. I must take responsibility for having added to the confusion ... “ Mr. Zaccardelli said in his resignation letter to Mr. Harper. “The continuing controversy ... makes it increasingly difficult for me and for the institution to fulfill its responsibilities to the Canadian people.”
Behind closed doors, Mr. Day, Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Justice Minister Vic Toews all expressed their wish that Mr. Zaccardelli be turfed, The Canadian Press reported.
Mr. Day made a direct appeal to the Prime Minister at one cabinet meeting this fall. “Day asked straight out. He said, ‘This is not right. Why is this man still here?''' a government official said.
The Prime Minister avoided the subject, the official said. “Harper just changed the channel. He said, ‘Now, moving along to the next subject.' He just cut him dead.”
However, late Wednesday, the PMO vigorously denied the account of the two senior government officials that Mr. Harper had defended Mr. Zaccardelli for months in the face of criticism from his own ministers.
“I've just spoken with Stockwell Day, who was quoted in [the] story. I've also spoken with the Prime Minister of Canada,” Ms. Buckler said. “The story is an outright and utter fabrication.”
The two government sources, however, said there had been a growing sense of unease that Mr. Zaccardelli appeared untouchable despite mounting controversies — the Arar affair, an RCMP pension scandal and the force's involvement in the Liberal sponsorship fiasco.
Opposition MPs said that an outsider might be needed for the good of the RCMP.
“We need a clean break,” Liberal MP Mark Holland said. NDP Leader Jack Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe both said a parliamentary committee should have the opportunity to vet the new commissioner of the RCMP.
Mr. Zaccardelli, 58, worked on white-collar and organized crime before taking over the force in 2000. He also participated in the Musical Ride as a hobby. Morale is low at the RCMP following the Arar debacle and a number of recent controversies across Canada.
The O'Connor inquiry found that the RCMP provided incorrect intelligence about al-Qaeda links that Mr. Arar was alleged to have had to U.S. authorities. The Americans detained Mr. Arar in the fall of 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held in a small, filthy cell for a year.
The O'Connor inquiry will release another report next week that will include recommendations to increase oversight of the RCMP.
RCMP Commissioner Leonard Nicholson resigned in 1959 after the government of John Diefenbaker refused a request for reinforcements to deal with a contentious Newfoundland strike.
06/12/06, Jeff Sallot, RCMP chief's troubles grow, (Back).
In one day on the Hill, Canada's top police officer was made to swear on a Bible, accused of perjury by an MP and put on notice by the Prime Minister for changing his testimony on the Arar case.
OTTAWA — Giuliano Zaccardelli, Canada's top police officer, was forced to swear on a Bible Tuesday before being allowed to give evidence to Parliament.
He was then accused of perjury by a Liberal MP.
By day's end, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he was “surprised and concerned” by the fact the RCMP Commissioner had changed key testimony given in the Maher Arar case.
Mr. Zaccardelli said Tuesday he did not lie but had been mistaken in earlier testimony about what he knew, and when, in the case of Mr. Arar, an innocent Canadian whom the Mounties wrongly labelled as an al-Qaeda terrorist.
In a rare move, the top Mountie was asked to swear the oath by public safety and security committee co-chairman Mark Holland, a Toronto-area Liberal MP who said Mr. Zaccardelli may have perjured himself in the earlier testimony. Witnesses at House committees are almost never asked to take an oath before testifying.
Mr. Harper and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said they will carefully study Mr. Zaccardelli's sworn testimony as they consider his future.
The Prime Minister responded to opposition calls for the commissioner's immediate dismissal by saying: “We do not fire people without due process. But we will proceed appropriately and ensure there is accountability for actions.”
Mr. Zaccardelli's job appeared to be hanging by a thread as the Conservative minority government tried to distance itself from him. The three opposition parties called for his resignation.
Mr. Harper was anxious to point out that the Liberals were in office in 2002 when Mr. Arar was deported from the U.S. to Syria.
Nevertheless, he said, “the government is surprised and concerned by the change in story in the [commissioner's] testimony today.”
“This government will examine the facts and will respond in a manner that is objective, professional and dispassionate and will be done with full regard to due process,” Mr. Harper added.
Mr. Zaccardelli testified before the committee on Sept. 28 that he first learned members of the force had mistakenly fingered Mr. Arar as a terrorist — but had tried to correct the record with U.S authorities — while Mr. Arar was still in a Syrian prison four years ago.
He now says he “made a mistake” in his earlier testimony and he really did not know that Mounties did not try to correct the record at the time.
Mr. Zaccardelli told skeptical committee members he did not have a complete picture about what had passed between Canadian and U.S. security agencies until after a judicial commission of inquiry report cleared Mr. Arar on Sept. 18.
The commissioner said he did not intend to mislead the committee, but he had mistakenly incorporated information he first knew of from the inquiry report this September with his recollection of what he knew in 2002 and 2003.
Mr. Zaccardelli carefully couched Tuesday's testimony in conditional phrases, such as “to the best of my knowledge.”
At one point, under intense questioning by Bloc Québécois MP Serge Ménard, a former Quebec public safety minister, he said: “ I indicated I may not have totally represented the facts as they were.”
Mr. Day said the first he knew of the “apparent contradiction” in the commissioner's story only on Monday when Mr. Zaccardelli discussed the Arar case during a luncheon speaking appearance at the Canadian Club of Ottawa.
However, Mr. Zaccardelli said he met with Mr. Day last Friday to discuss his coming appearance at a parliamentary committee. But Mr. Zaccardelli said he did not tell his minister what he intended to say during his second appearance before the committee.
Mr. Zaccardelli also disclosed another meeting with Mr. Day on Sept. 22, the Friday before he was to testify before the committee on the first occasion. The commissioner said he did not disclose this meeting previously because he was not sure if Mr. Day wanted that information out. “I was not as forthcoming on my meeting as I might have been.”
Mr. Zaccardelli denied the suggestion that Mr. Day or other Conservative ministers were either muzzling him or trying to tell him what to say in testimony.
Incredulous MPs from all parties tore into Mr. Zaccardelli at the committee.
The charitable view, expressed by Montreal Liberal MP and former justice minister Irwin Cotler, and several other committee members, was that Mr. Zaccardelli's changing version of events demonstrates such incompetence that he should resign.
Mr. Holland, the co-chairman, was more pointed. He asked: “On which day did you perjure yourself? Today or Sept. 28?”
Mr. Holland later repeated the perjury allegation to reporters outside the committee room, saying: “We've now got Mr. Zaccardelli, in my opinion, perjuring himself before a parliamentary committee.”
Ontario Conservative MP Gord Brown told the commissioner it was hard to buy his story that he learned the facts only from the Arar commission report.
“How can it be that the commissioner can't get information from your own organization?” Mr. Brown asked. “Doesn't that suggest to you that you failed in your duty?”
Mr. Zaccardelli said he runs a large organization of 25,000 people, and in the Arar case bits of information were held by disparate parts of the RCMP.
It was only when Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor pulled all the pieces together in his report on the Arar case in September that the picture became clear for him, Mr. Zaccardelli said.
(Judge O'Connor cleared Mr. Arar, a Canadian computer engineer, of any involvement with al-Qaeda and terrorism. The O'Connor inquiry found that the RCMP provided incorrect and inflammatory intelligence about Mr. Arar's supposed al-Qaeda links to U.S. authorities. The Americans detained Mr. Arar in the fall of 2002 and deported him to Syria, where he was tortured and held in a small, filthy cell for a year, the judge said.)
Ontario Conservative MP Rick Norlock, a 30-year veteran of the Ontario Provincial Police, was annoyed that Mr. Zaccardelli did not notify the committee of his mistaken testimony until yesterday, two months after the fact.
Another Conservative MP on the committee, Laurie Hawn of Edmonton, said: “I'm a little incredulous” that a Mountie with 36 years on the job could have been so mistaken in remembering what he knew and when about an incident as notorious as the Arar case.
“I have a hard time accepting the fact that you made that kind of mistake,” Mr. Hawn said.
06/12/06, Editorial, Zaccardelli wades deeper into the mire, (Back).
Baffling, bizarre, outrageous, comical. RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli's testimony on the Maher Arar file before the House of Commons national security committee yesterday was all those things. His defence of his shameful performance on that file defied reason, logic and the public record. It contradicted the entire thrust of his testimony before the same committee on Sept. 28. It was yet another embarrassment for a national police force that has had far too many embarrassments of late.
Here was the commissioner of the RCMP being asked to swear an oath to tell the truth -- the very first witness requested to do so in front of the national security committee under this government. Granted, the motion to have him swear an oath was put forward for calculated effect by a Liberal MP, Mark Holland. But none of the Conservatives on the committee opposed it. It seems Mr. Zaccardelli has lost the trust of the committee. He has also, since September, lost the trust of the country.
The question is when he will lose the trust of the government that employs him. Every day he remains commissioner gives the lie to Stephen Harper's promise to make government accountable for its actions. Under Mr. Zaccardelli's leadership, the RCMP made the dangerous assertion to U.S. authorities that Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was suspected of being an al-Qaeda member; the RCMP had no evidence to support the claim. When Mr. Arar was detained in New York in late September, 2002, the RCMP took a microscopic step toward correcting the record by saying it had no definitive information on his links to al-Qaeda. Too little, too late; four days later, the United States shipped him to Syria, where he was detained for a year and tortured. Mr. Zaccardelli said in his testimony in September that he learned all this early on. Yet the record shows he did little or nothing to make the Canadian government aware of the RCMP errors.
Now he claims he was "imprecise" in his Sept. 28 testimony. Canadians can make up their own minds. The transcripts are available on the parliamentary website at http://www.parl.gc.ca\secu (look under "meetings"). Mr. Zaccardelli's repeated explanations on Sept. 28 do not lack for precision. "I personally became directly involved in the file after Mr. Arar was detained and sent to Syria. . . . Mr. Chairman, as I have said, I learned that a mistake had been made, that the information concerning Mr. Arar was false, after Mr. Arar was imprisoned. At the same time, I learned that the investigators had made an effort to correct that false information."
Yesterday, however, he said he learned about the mistakes only when he read the report this September of an inquiry by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor. "No senior officer was aware of [the mistakes] and all of us became aware after the report was published by Justice O'Connor."
Mr. Zaccardelli is asking Canadians to believe that as RCMP commissioner he waited four years to ask questions. In the months after Mr. Arar turned up in Syria, U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci and secretary of state Colin Powell said publicly and privately to Canadian officials that the United States deemed Mr. Arar an al-Qaeda suspect based on information from Canada. That is the public record. It was Mr. Zaccardelli's duty to ask questions.
Whether in his Sept. 28 evasions or in yesterday's, Mr. Zaccardelli is damaging the RCMP's already tarnished reputation. A recent poll found the RCMP popular in the West for its local police service. But its behaviour on Mr. Arar and on other disturbing files -- as when it interfered in the last federal election by announcing, in mid-campaign, an investigation into the Liberal finance minister's office -- inspires no confidence. The force has a leader who cannot keep his story straight on his most important file.
Either Mr. Zaccardelli kept vital information from cabinet or he never bothered to find out what went on in the Arar file. Either way, the potential effect was the same: Mr. Arar's torturous stay in Syria was prolonged. If there is a shred of accountability to be found in the land of the Accountability Act, Mr. Zaccardelli will not be commissioner much longer.
06/12/06, Greg McArthur, Politics closing in on RCMP's top cop, (Back).
RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli has overseen criminal investigations that didn't hesitate to wade into Canadian political spheres, whether those probes targeted journalists, cabinet ministers -- or even if they fell during an election.
But now it is politics that is quickly closing in on him.
As Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his government weigh his conflicting testimony before a Commons committee, Mr. Zaccardelli's six-year reign -- filled with unresolved plots and political intrigue, will be not be left out of their final decision.
He arrived in Canada in the 1950s from the village of Prezza, Italy. As a boy in Montreal, he delivered newspapers and took part-time jobs in restaurants. After attending Loyola College, he became one of the few non-Canadian-born recruits to join the RCMP.
It was in New Brunswick, where Mr. Zaccardelli was head of criminal operations, that the reality of police work would become clear. It's muddy, and the mud sticks.
During his tenure on the East Coast allegations began to surface about the Kingsclear Youth Training School near Fredericton. A school guard was convicted of sexually assaulting young boys, but many residents claimed in a civil lawsuit that they were abused by an RCMP officer and that the force covered it up.
Mr. Zaccardelli called the alleged cover-up a sham -- "There were three major investigations, there was an inquiry," he said in 2004.
A Quebec judge questioned the RCMP when he dismissed all the charges against François Beaudoin, former president of the Business Development Bank of Canada. The RCMP raided Mr. Beaudoin's home, chalet and golf club in 2001. Mr. Beaudoin had refused to grant a loan extension to a hotel in the riding of former prime minister Jean Chrétien. Mr. Justice André Denis, in throwing out charges against Mr. Beaudoin, noted "the ferocity and unkindness with which [Mr. Beaudoin] was treated in this affair."
Former National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh was also served with a search warrant by the RCMP after he wrote stories that questioned whether Mr. Chrétien tried to influence the bank's decision.
An RCMP raid on the home and office of Ottawa Citizen reporter Juliet O'Neil generated more recent headlines. Ontario Superior Court Justice Lynn Ratushney has admonished Mr. Zaccardelli's force for the search, which she called an attempt to use Ms. O'Neill to find who leaked classified documents in the case of Mr. Arar.
However,it is the RCMP probe into how the private sector learned in advance about a Liberal government income-trust announcement that may affect history the most.
In the middle of last January's federal campaign, the commissioner faxed a letter to the office of an NDP MP confirming that the RCMP had launched an investigation into the leak -- perhaps the tipping point for the faltering campaign of former prime minister Paul Martin.
05/12/06, Editorial, The two Arar stories that Zaccardelli tells, (Back).
The contradiction that tumbled from the mouth of RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli yesterday is surely one he is aware of. It was a mountain of a contradiction, next to which Michael Ignatieff's "I'm not losing any sleep" (over Israel's bombing of Qana, Lebanon) and "it was a war crime" are but a molehill.
Addressing what he knew about the devastatingly wrong information communicated by the RCMP to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation about a Canadian, Maher Arar -- information that surely propelled Mr. Arar to his year-long nightmare of incarceration and torture in Syria four years ago -- Mr. Zaccardelli told the Canadian Club in Ottawa this: "Senior officials, including myself, were not informed until the commission of inquiry completed its works." (Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor spent 2½ years assessing Canada's role in the deportation.)
If true, his remark yesterday is utterly self-damning. While a Canadian was confined in a Syrian prison, while the media raised alarms and while the Canadian government at its highest levels scrambled for answers, this commissioner sat in the dark. Notice the passive voice: "were not informed." Did he not ask, demand, probe, threaten?
Of course he did. He said as much (except for the threatening part) to the House of Commons security committee on Sept. 28. "What did you know and when did you know it?" the committee asked. Mr. Zaccardelli replied that he took pains to inform himself virtually from the time Mr. Arar turned up in a Syrian jail. He went on to say: "I found out that investigators were speaking to American officials while Mr. Arar was in detention [in New York]. I learned that, in that process, they tried to correct what was labelled as false and misleading information. That is my first point of knowledge."
That was an illuminating admission. If he meant what he said, Mr. Zaccardelli knew nearly from the beginning that the RCMP had helped create a human tragedy when it told the FBI, without any evidence to say so, that Mr. Arar was an Islamic extremist suspected of al-Qaeda links. Mr. Zaccardelli had a moral duty and a duty to his office to try to undo the errors. He failed miserably. He told no government minister that the RCMP had delivered wrong information to the Americans.
Mr. Zaccardelli appears again this morning before the security committee. Which story will he tell?
(Back).
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